


where all my journeys end

by plutoandpersephone



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Blow Jobs, Hand Jobs, M/M, Older Jaskier | Dandelion, Professor Jaskier | Dandelion, Reunited and It Feels So Good, Semi-Public Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:33:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25167763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plutoandpersephone/pseuds/plutoandpersephone
Summary: Geralt has lost count of the number of years that have passed since he last saw Jaskier. It's midsummer and his path leads him towards Oxenfurt, with a distant hope that the bard might be residing within its walls.He's in luck. Longing and regret burn between them—and there's something else too, so beautiful and frightening that Geralt hardly dares to examine it.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 27
Kudos: 285
Collections: Geraskier Midsummer Mini Bang





	where all my journeys end

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to the amazing and talented Mao for the accompanying artwork to this piece, for your endless good humour and support and for your beautiful works.
> 
> Thank you too to Beth and Bee who acted as editors and beta readers.

Oxenfurt smells like burning wood and oak leaf, scents turning on the breeze as Geralt approaches. Red roofs crest in a periwinkle blue sky, reflected in the rivers and seas that surround the grey walls of the city. 

Geralt knows the smell of midsummer. On the road, it smells like the tall sprigs of lavender that flower at the side of the bridle path, like the long white lilies in their briefest bloom. Some years—the lucky years, he has begun to think—it smells like the crook of Jaskier’s neck, warm from sleep in their shared bedroll, or chamomile fresh between the cotton sheets of some backwater inn. 

The midsummer in Oxenfurt is quite different. It’s strong and heavy with smoke, thick around the edges like someone has set a flame to the lilting florals with which he is so familiar. He tells himself that he is glad for the change, for the strange new path that his feet seem to be taking. It’s good. One becomes so accustomed to their ways that it begins to settle around the bones like damp, like rot. Too often Geralt’s paths are lined with ghosts—those of people and times that have long since passed—and too often they end with the hulking shadows of monsters and the thickness of bloodshed. Today, his path leads him to the coast.

Unpredictability is not always dangerous. It was Jaskier who taught him that much, over the years. The reminder makes something burn hot at the base of Geralt’s sternum.

Geralt remembers the promise of the coast, long-ago words in the shadow of a dragon, tentative and small in the orange of the sunset. It has taken many years for his feet to pay heed to that promise and take him towards the sea. 

It would be foolish, though, to think it a mere coincidence that the path he winds along falls down towards the city of Oxenfurt. It would be foolish to try not to hope that there is something, someone, waiting there for him. Something more than the shore and the spray, the crunch of pebbled shingle beneath the soles of his boots.

Jaskier had spoken of Oxenfurt often on their journeys together. At first Geralt had been skeptical, unsure of the role that the seemingly incompetent bard could possibly play in a place of such esteemed learning. But he’d found himself proved wrong with the long years, with the truth of Jaskier—smart and witty and tender in a way that Geralt could not bring himself to be.

Geralt knows that in the seasons when Jaskier is not travelling alongside him, or hopping from city to city selling his songs, he often takes up a residency in Oxenfurt. Teaching classes on music, mostly, but also literature, astronomy, the mathematical sciences. Intangible subjects that do not really interest Geralt in the grandest scheme of things, but that he would happily—if secretly—listen to Jaskier talk about for hours on end.

The great gates of Oxenfurt open for him and Roach in the late afternoon light, glowing syrupy on the grey stone. There is a bonfire burning somewhere close by, and the blue smoke drifts overhead like the promise of rain clouds. Geralt presses a few heavy coins into the waiting palm of a pinch-faced young girl in the city’s stables, and in return she takes Roach from him, pointing him vaguely in the direction of the academy. 

There is a feeling in the air like that before a battle, crackling and wild, but the faces that pass by him are bright, lit with smiles and laughter. It’s a celebration, then. 

As he makes his way towards the academy, through one of the heavy stone arches framed by white buildings with narrow, brown-beamed facades, Geralt begins to understand how Jaskier would fit in here. The people who bustle along the paved passageways have scarcely a second glance for Geralt; they walk with a focused, studious determination, as if they, scholars of Oxenfurt, must be the most important people in the world. A young man passes by with his arms full of papers, talking animatedly to a woman who has a long quill stuck behind her ear. An ink spot blooms on her top lip like a tiny violet. From a top window, there is the sound of plucked strings, and Geralt thinks of Jaskier’s hands on his lute, those slender fingers, the incredibly delicate twist of his wrist. 

He brushes the image away, lest he get his hopes up too high. Jaskier may not even be here. He might have decided to see out the midsummer celebrations somewhere else: perhaps parading his songs in the sultry heat of the south, or else revelling in Novigrad, just along the river, with plenty of wine and some pretty young thing balanced on his thighs.

Geralt is not the sort of man who prays. But he throws up a silent word that some higher power might have granted Jaskier a season of classes between the academy’s walls.

He rounds a corner into a wide courtyard—scrubby grass and cobbles, a few tall spruces reaching up between the beams of the surrounding buildings. Many of the heavy oak doors are flung open against the warm afternoon, and people are spilling out onto the stones.

Geralt watches for a while, cloaking himself in the shadows as best he can. That same promise of celebration sings in the air, and Geralt hones in on snippets of conversation that allude to some kind of evening feast: a sparking bonfire, honey-rich mead, fresh oak leaves rustling in the wind. 

He keeps watchful, studying the passing faces for any hint of familiarity. 

And then, at long last. There he is. 

Jaskier appears beneath the bough of a great archway, surrounded by students who shout and chatter and demand the attention of their professor. He speaks to each of them in turn, his face calm and professional in a way that Geralt has never seen before. He’s wearing a light blue doublet that catches the midsummer sun, shining the very same colour as his eyes. 

Jaskier smiles at one of his pupils and Geralt watches the lines at the side of his mouth, worn deeper than the last time they saw each other. How long has it been? Geralt tries to count the winters. Six? Seven? Time burns long and monsters wild, and he is weary of it. It makes him miss Jaskier. It makes Geralt miss him and the turning of his years. 

It doesn’t take long for Jaskier to notice Geralt, barely obscured behind the corner of one of the buildings. Part of him wishes that he would have stayed unseen for a while longer, watching Jaskier in this natural habitat. It’s an unfamiliar setting for a witcher and yet it seems to come so free and easy to Jaskier, evident in the looseness of his shoulders, the quiet kindness of his smile. 

So this is what he looks like without Geralt, without adventure, without the wildness of the track seldom trodden. It looks good on him. That knowledge has a darkness at its periphery, and Geralt swears not to examine it any further. 

Thankfully, he doesn’t have to. Jaskier’s eyes find Geralt’s own and Jaskier’s face clears—a pink dawn after many days of rain. A single hand raised in greeting. 

  
art by [Mao](https://twitter.com/chococo_mao)

And in that space, a slumbering ember begins to flicker, a spark struck anew by the meeting of their gaze. This thing that aches between them, that squeezes tight around Geralt’s chest and makes his breath come sharp and shallow as if he’s been running. As if he’s been fighting. He takes a step out onto the sunlit cobblestones. 

Jaskier is making his excuses to those few who are still vying for his attention. The students glance at Jaskier and then, upon finding his gaze distracted, they look towards Geralt—out over the courtyard and to the place where the opposite buildings adjoin. Jaskier rolls his eyes, a half-smile playing on his lips. Geralt doesn’t know what his own expression is doing, he hopes that it is one of light and welcoming amusement, but he doubts it. 

Of course the pair of them will find themselves the talk of the academy now: _The White Wolf, huh? Is that the one in the professor’s songs? The Witcher?_ Once, that knowledge might have set Geralt’s teeth on edge and raised his hackles high enough to make him think about turning and fleeing, but not anymore. Perhaps the passage of time has made him soft, made him trusting. Perhaps it is something else.

With the last remaining students finally dispersed, talking excitedly and heading off in groups and pairs down the narrow alleyways that lead away from the courtyard, they can finally allow the distance between them to close. It thrums in Geralt’s blood, the knowledge that he needs to be close to Jaskier. It burns in the same way that he knows battle with a potion on his tongue and the guiding sound of his heartbeat in his head.

Jaskier plays coy at first, lending some seriousness to his voice.

“Witcher.”

Geralt plays right back.

“Bard.”

It’s staid and appropriate and the air around Jaskier smells like lavender. 

“It’s Professor, actually,” Jaskier replies, unable to stop the smile that toys with the edge of his stern expression. “Here, they call me Professor.”

“Hm.” He will call Jaskier nothing of the sort. 

Were they alone, Geralt knows all too well how this would go. Hands rucked up as quickly as possible beneath thin undershirts, bruising kisses sucked against delicate skin—perhaps with no more than the forest floor to serve them as a bed. It would be over too quickly, with Geralt’s mouth pressed to the nape of Jaskier’s neck.

But they’re not alone. Voices echo down from the eaves above them, laughter and singing and the sounds of instruments being warmed up for an evening of celebration. Jaskier takes a step closer, and Geralt can hear his heart beating—much faster than Geralt’s own, heavy, desire-laced. Lust smells like a warm hearth.

As Jaskier closes the gap between them, a wide beam of sunlight passes over him, slanting down through a gap in the buildings. It catches in his hair, fine and bright. Last time Geralt laid eyes upon him, his hair was the same colour as chestnuts, golden lustre turning to dull, reddish tones. Most of it is silver, now. Narrow bands of brown nestle in amongst the thick streaks of white. 

He’s in the autumn of his life, Geralt understands as much. His age is as beautiful on him as the gold of the leaves.

“You’re older,” Geralt mutters, resisting the urge to reach out his hand and touch the lines at the edge of Jaskier’s eyes. Still that incredible blue, seawater right before the crest of a wave. 

“Gods, witcher,” Jaskier laughs. His mouth is a delicious curve, more than close enough for Geralt to kiss. “You know how to flatter a man, don’t you?” 

Geralt hears how his words must have sounded to a human—ever obsessed with the passing of the years—and shakes his head.

“It wasn’t an insult,” Geralt says. A barb sharpens suddenly in his stomach, hard and tight over the coil of his desire. He’s never been good with words or the delicate balance of emotions, and none of that had ever really mattered in the grand scheme of his wild, barren life. Until Jaskier.

“I know.” Jaskier smiles, soft and warm. The sharpness in Geralt’s gut dissipates as quickly as it had come. “And I must admit, I’m no longer that spry young thing who followed you down a Posada footpath.”

Geralt doesn’t say anything. There’s no point playing comparison. His appearance does not shift in the way that Jaskier is accustomed to, mutations and magic all acting their part to keep him looking far younger than the number of years he has wintered. 

“I didn’t expect to see you this year, Geralt,” Jaskier says, finding a new subject in the face of Geralt’s silence. He’s always been good at that. “The spring came and went long ago. I thought I’d be waiting until the winter was over. And, then… Well, maybe longer than that—who knows?”

It had annoyed Geralt at first, Jaskier’s peculiar way of rolling out words over the top of one another—stories and worries and suggestions piling in until he was asked to stop. But he sees now that he’d missed it in all those empty months, the quiet of the road unbroken by anything apart from the cries of birds and the sound of Roach’s hooves. 

They’re standing close enough now that Geralt would only have to reach out his fingertips and they would brush up against the fine silk edges of Jaskier’s doublet. He can practically taste Jaskier’s heartbeat in his own mouth.

“I smelt the bonfire,” Geralt says, as if that’s any kind of explanation. He’s distracted by the low flickering of Jaskier’s eyelashes.

“Oh, of course,” Jaskier nods, his expression one of amused understanding. “There must be a thousand bonfires burning up and down the continent this evening, Geralt, and your nose just _happened_ to lead you to Oxenfurt. Our finest academy city. I know there must be plenty of wanton landladies and pretty farmhands mingling with the professors in our esteemed lecture halls. I’m sure they can’t wait to fling you their midsummer wreaths.”

His words are so heavy with sarcasm that Geralt is surprised they don’t make a sound as they clatter down onto the cobbles.

“Alright,” Geralt concedes. There’s no point in arguing. “I followed the path to Oxenfurt because I hoped that you would be here.”

Jaskier gives a little nod—a far cry from the holler of righteous celebration that Geralt might have expected of him in his youth. Time has drawn a thin, serious veil down over Jaskier’s features. Geralt knows Jaskier beneath the weight of all his facades; he knows him beyond the the raucous performer, the babbling poet, the reckless philanderer. He knows him sweet and tender and vulnerable, beneath the sheets, with nothing between them but the silver of the moonlight. He longs to reach out and find that soft heart that he knows is still beating beneath the front of this sharp-tongued Oxenfurt professor. 

“Is there somewhere we can go?” Geralt asks. He can see it now: a shaded bedroom in one of the tall towers, cool stone and a single, high window through which the sunset could daub its way across the opposite wall. Jaskier’s single bed, rumpled sheets. Stacks of papers and old, leather-bound books the only witnesses to their bodies meeting for the first time in years.

Geralt’s hand finds Jaskier’s wrist, that slender, musician’s wrist. His thumb and forefinger close easily around it. At the touch, Jaskier gives a sudden start, as if Geralt’s fingers are hotter than he can take, as if he burns him.

“Now?” Jaskier asks. It’s a stupid question and they both know it—they’re not going to be able to keep their hands off each other for very much longer.

“Now,” Geralt concurs. 

A chorus of boisterous singing begins to echo down from a top window.

“I have a house, but it’s further outside the city walls,” Jaskier explains. “Towards the coast.”

The coast. Geralt nods, doing his best to quell the flicker of guilt that lights up in his stomach whenever Jaskier mentions that place—somewhere they should have lived and loved, in some timeline, had destiny treated them differently. 

“There, then.”

Jaskier sighs, shaking his head. It’s hard to tell whether the exasperation in his gesture is directed at Geralt or not. 

“I can’t leave yet, Geralt,” he says, “there are midsummer celebrations this evening: a bonfire, a banquet. The students have been weaving their wreaths since early this morning! Professors are required to attend.” 

Geralt feels his jaw tighten. Well then. Jaskier never was one for subtlety; Geralt will have to find a more explicit way to explain that he fully expects to have Jaskier’s mouth on his own within the next five minutes.

Jaskier cocks an eyebrow, apparently oblivious to Geralt’s thought processes.

“You’d be a welcome guest, Geralt, I’m sure.”

Just for a moment, Geralt lets himself imagine it. Sitting beside Jaskier in front of a blazing bonfire, the honeyed taste of mead on his lips. A flower tucked behind Jaskier’s ear, cheeks pink, the soaring flames reflected in his eyes.

“When do they start?” Geralt asks.

“The celebrations? In an hour or two, I suppose—it’s not enough time to get to my rooms and back, Geralt, I—”

Geralt tugs slightly on Jaskier’s wrist, a sharp, sudden movement that pulls them chest to chest. Part of him hopes that no one is watching too closely from the surrounding windows, more for Jaskier’s sake than his own. Another part of him—hot and pressing—hears the sharp, gasped whine that Jaskier gives, and finds that he doesn’t really care who sees. 

“Bard. Let me have my way with you.”

Jaskier’s eyes widen. That look makes something dangerous curl in the base of Geralt’s stomach.

“Geralt, I— Fuck.” He gives a little laugh, shaky and giddy, as if he can’t quite believe what is happening. “Okay, gods above. I know somewhere we can go.”

“Good.” Geralt’s voice snaps around the word. He takes a step back, releasing his hold on Jaskier’s wrist. In the absence of Geralt’s hand, Jaskier’s fingers twitch with a restless energy so palpable that Geralt can practically taste it. “Lead on.”

Jaskier turns in the direction of one of the narrow passages that leads away from the courtyard. As he goes, he shoots Geralt a look over his shoulder which says, quite pointedly: _you are mad, and thank the gods for it._

They twist together through the maze of white brick and grey stone, tight, shadowed alleyways and expansive squares, where the midsummer flowers are in their fullest bloom. The smell of the bonfire begins to die at their backs, the lively bustle of the academy courtyards slowly being replaced by the occasional flurry of birdsong.

They turn a corner into a sheltered cloister, a dark tunnel of arches and pillars that look out onto a deserted square. Geralt can hear Jaskier’s breath, shallow and excited, as they reach the far wall.

“Here,” Jaskier says. He moves to face Geralt, his back pressed against the stone. There’s a fire burning in his gaze that spreads itself over Geralt’s chest, his shoulders, right down into the very hollows of his ribcage.

“Here?” Geralt asks. It’s a little more public that he had envisioned—he had imagined some shadowed hall with a heavy, locked door, the dusty corner of an empty library. If anyone were to pass through the square or the cloister on the opposite side, they would certainly see the pair of them. The idea sends a thrill of unexpected excitement up the column of his spine.

“Is there something wrong?”

“No,” Geralt says, trying to keep his voice as even as possible. “I didn’t know you engaged in such public… debauchery.”

“Well then,” Jaskier grins, “perhaps you don’t really know me at all.”

With a quick, decisive motion, Jaskier’s hands find their way to the heavy leather straps that cross over Geralt’s body. He hooks his fingers up underneath them, the backs of his hands flush with Geralt’s chest, and tugs—hard—spurred on by their proximity, the shivers of anticipation. There is a tight, wiry strength in him that never fails to take Geralt by surprise.

“I hope you’re going to kiss me,” Jaskier mutters, his mouth so close to Geralt’s that the light can barely seep its way between them. 

Geralt doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to. He closes that final centimetre and presses their mouths together. The earth trembles and then grows still beneath their feet.

Geralt realises, as Jaskier’s mouth opens like a flower beneath his own, that this is everything he has been missing. In all his wanderings and his wildness, monsters and maidens alike beneath him—it is this which brings his world into completion. This man, this mouth. He tries not to let the thought overwhelm him. 

They kiss slowly, silently, curling around each other like the first flickering beginnings of a fire. Geralt’s hands close at Jaskier’s waist. He’s grown softer over the years, and Geralt savours the gasp that comes when he presses his thumbs into the tenderness at Jaskier’s hips. Jaskier pulls Geralt’s bottom lip between his teeth and bright sparks shake right to the depths of his chest.

Tilting Jaskier’s head back, Geralt takes the opportunity to run his lips along the exposed swathe of skin where the shoulder of his shirt has slipped. Most of the hair on his chest is silver now, and thinned out some, and Geralt puts his mouth there too. Jaskier hisses, a sharp, needy inhale through his teeth, and the sound echoes out against the stone. 

“Gods, I’ve missed you,” Jaskier says, his words carrying that same, tight desperation. Geralt kisses the skin beneath his ear. Moved from the place where they were pressed to his chest, Jaskier’s hands seem unable to settle, narrow, restless birds against Geralt’s shoulder blades. “What happened to you?”

Geralt senses that it isn’t the sort of question that requires an answer. He focuses his attention on the smell of Jaskier’s skin.

“I thought that—oh—” 

Jaskier’s voice quavers as Geralt licks at the place where his pulse shakes through the surface of his skin. He tastes good, different to how Geralt had remembered, like sunlight streaming through windows, like the smoke from a fine wood stove. 

“Where were you?” Jaskier asks. His hands still in their desperate fluttering over Geralt’s back, coming to grasp at his broad shoulders. 

Geralt regards him, eyes narrowed. Perhaps he really does want him to explain his whereabouts over the past years, although Geralt can think of a number of things to do with his mouth that are far more interesting than talking.

“The Path. Monsters.” Geralt grunts, in his own elaborate way. “Do you really want to talk about this now?”

Jaskier gasps Geralt’s name into his mouth, and then, words drawn out on a desperate sigh, “I’ve missed you. I’ve missed you.”

He doesn’t ask for any further clarification. Knowing where Geralt has been these past years, hearing about his trials and tribulations, will do nothing to ease the pain of his absence. Geralt realises as much, and his guilt rolls in him like the ocean. 

Jaskier curves against him, his body melting into the empty space. Gods, he should take him right here, bent flat over the wall of the courtyard, pale thighs pressed against the stone. He should take Jaskier home—midsummer celebrations be damned—and put his mouth on every inch of Jaskier that he has not seen or kissed in years. 

There are many things that he should do; there are many things that he should have done. He should have found Jaskier and loved him, night after night, in forest clearings and in merchant’s halls. He should have had him buried between his thighs in every little backwater inn across the continent, should have let every constellation in the turning heavens see the white line of his throat, head thrown back in ecstacy.

This shouldn’t be their first time in six, seven, eight years, and it certainly shouldn’t be taking place here, backed up against the rough stone of Jaskier’s academy city. The regret at all which has not passed builds like a sob in Geralt’s chest. 

“I’m sorry.” 

The apology falls from Geralt’s mouth before he even realises it. He speaks it against Jaskier’s cheekbone, and then again, pressed to his mouth. 

“I’m sorry. I left you too long.”

Jaskier stills in his arms. For a moment, Geralt thinks that he’s going to push him away.

He doesn’t. 

Jaskier raises his hand and his fingers close at Geralt’s jaw, his thumb pressed in hard enough to bruise. They stand eye to eye, chin to chin, and Jaskier forces him to look—to look into his blue eyes and into the hard, sad expression on his face.

“I’m in love with you, Geralt,” Jaskier says. His voice shakes at the edges. “You know that don’t you?”

Geralt knows it, has always known it. Ever since those first years, when Jaskier was younger and freer with his words, when he gasped every feeling into the crook of Geralt’s neck, when he threw every new notion out into the expanse of the sky. And now he knows it even more acutely, even though they have spent years apart, even though the passage of time has changed them, worn over them as water changes the shape of the riverbed. 

All the same, Jaskier’s confession falls through him like a stone. 

“I know.” 

It’s all he can manage. Reciprocation seems gauche and frightening, but Jaskier smiles all the same, soft and indulgent. Perhaps it is enough. 

“Well then,” he says, “spare me the apologies. I thought you’d vowed to have your way with me, witcher.”

Jaskier’s grip on Geralt’s jaw tightens, pulling him forward to press their mouths together once more. With the air clearer, some of the emotion of the past years pried loose and set free to the wind, there is space for a new fire to light between them. No longer slow and languid, burning with the first tentative flames of reunion, Geralt feels a bonfire’s beginning between their bodies, desire crackling in his gut. 

He loves Jaskier. He has never loved anything or anyone in the way that he loves Jaskier. He has kept himself hardened and distant in every relationship and yet this one has slipped, golden and beautiful, through some unguarded gap.

Geralt bites all of this down into the beautiful curve of Jaskier’s throat. Jaskier swears through gritted teeth. 

“There he is,” Jaskier gasps and his words catch in his throat. “My white wolf.”

They surge together, wild and open-mouthed. Geralt closes his hands around Jaskier’s waist again, letting his thumbs slip lower this time, hooking beneath the band of his trousers. He imagines his skin here, milky and smooth, and how it might look in purple bloom beneath Geralt’s teeth. Geralt can feel Jaskier’s interest beginning to press against his hip, hot and hard even through the heavy fabric of his own britches.

Reaching one hand down, Jaskier takes hold of Geralt’s wrist and guides his fingers to the front of his trousers.

“Please.” Jaskier licks the word into Geralt’s mouth. “Touch me, please.”

Geralt grins—who is he to deny his bard his desires? He slides his fingers in between the fastenings, loosening each one with a slow, smooth flick of his wrist, laces moving through golden eyelets until Jaskier’s britches loosen at the waist and slip down over the curve of his hips. He’s wearing thin underclothes, and Geralt can feel the warmth of his skin against his hand.

“You’re maddening,” Jaskier murmurs, his hips twisting, seeking more friction from the flat of Geralt’s palm. 

Kissing the words out of his mouth, Geralt pushes Jaskier’s trousers further down and they bunch loosely around his thighs.

Geralt had forgotten how beautiful Jaskier was, like this. Or perhaps not forgotten, but buried, the memory sunk into the sea of many absent miles, in the expanse of their continent’s wild, wide face. All the same, as he leans back to regard Jaskier once more, he is struck by the expression on his face—lips loose and red, undone by Geralt’s ministrations. 

They know every inch of each other. When Geralt finally slides a hand inside Jaskier’s underclothes and wraps his fingers around him, the sensation is so achingly familiar that he has to stop for a moment. His forehead rests against Jaskier’s own, their breath mixing, hot and insistent. With a quiet, bitten off whine, Jaskier does his very best to rock up into Geralt’s fist—although pinned as he is between Geralt’s body and the wall, there’s not really anywhere for him to go. 

“Come on.” 

Jaskier moans the words against gritted teeth, and Geralt kisses his mouth, weighing up the options in his head. 

He’s kept Jaskier on edge before—gods, how often he remembers those nights when he’s laid out beneath the lonely bowl of the sky—until he’s begging for release, teeth so desperate at Geralt’s skin that he might draw blood. He’s made Jaskier crackle like lightning, he’s pulled him so tight that he’s begun to fray at the edges, wild beneath Geralt’s hands. 

But Geralt has also seen the heady rush of Jaskier passions. He’s seen him strung out after long days on the road, just five minutes on his bedroll with Geralt’s fingers in his hair, coming quick and desperate over his own fist. Muttered words about how much he needed this, a steady stream of consciousness flung up past Geralt and into the heavens.

He has loved Jaskier wordless, his lips swollen and red; he has loved him babbling and loud,  
crooning sweet nothings into Geralt’s skin. That is what Geralt will take now, that surge of desire, with Jaskier’s hungry words poorly muffled into his shoulder. 

“I swear to all that is good and holy in this world, witcher, if you don’t—” Jaskier starts.

Whatever threat he has thought up quickly disappears. Geralt moves his hand, a firm, upward stroke that makes Jaskier’s head fall back with a groan, mouth open and his fine neck exposed. 

Geralt can’t resist pressing his mouth against him.

“Has Oxenfurt made you forget your manners?” Geralt asks, his teeth scraping lightly at his throat. 

Jaskier swears sharply, and the harsh shapes of his words move against Geralt’s own lips. 

“Please, Geralt, it—” Jaskier pauses, swallowing hard. Geralt watches as his skin shifts. “It’s been so long.”

It’s been so long. Geralt wonders how long. How long since Jaskier was touched like this, how long it’s been since he came apart beneath a hand other than his own. In his little coastal house, with the view of the ocean from a high bedroom and thoughts of… of what? Of Geralt, perhaps, of some other professor, young and smart and eloquent in ways that a witcher could never have any purpose to be. Or thinking of nothing, a calm sea, chasing pleasure with desperate fingers and panting breaths. 

“You waited for me?” Geralt asks. 

Jaskier pauses in his response, several exhalations pressed hard through his nostrils. As if he’s deciding whether or not to embellish his explanation, or just to let the truth free into the air between them.

“Well, no.” The truth then. “Not in the strictest sense of the word.”

If Jaskier’s expression is sheepish, Geralt has barely enough time to see it. He kisses him roughly, glad for his honesty, glad for the fact that he hasn’t spent the past years—a near decade, the unstoppable tide of so many seasons—alone. He couldn’t stand the thought of Jaskier living like some hermit while he was away, void of passion and joy in Geralt’s absence, punishing himself for something that he had no control over.

“Good.” Geralt kisses him again. He swipes the pad of his thumb over the bead of precome leaking from Jaskier’s dick and runs it down the length of his shaft, a slow pressure that has Jaskier trembling, shaking up against him. Geralt puts his free hand against the small of Jaskier’s back, holding him close and steady. 

“But,” Jaskier gasps as Geralt quickens the strokes of his hand, “it was always you, Geralt. Always.”

He doesn’t elaborate, and Geralt doesn’t need him to. There are so many ways he could end that sentence. It was always you. It was always you—the one I was in love with, the one who consumed my thoughts, the one who made me come so hard that I saw stars. 

Geralt keeps his pace steady, a firm twist on the upstroke that has Jaskier moaning a continual stream of curses and platitudes, hardly muffled by his bottom lip pulled in between his teeth. He’s leaking steadily now, and Geralt smears his skin with his own precome, dips his fingers lower to cradle his balls, to tease at the heat between his legs. 

“I can’t—fuck, Geralt, stop,” Jaskier bites down on the words and Geralt’s hand stills, just barely, a tight grip still at the base of his dick. “Just for a second, you beast.”

“Are you alright?” Geralt asks, although there is very little concern in his voice. From the heaving of Jaskier’s chest and the fluttering of his eyelids, Geralt can tell that Jaskier is quite alright—close to the edge beneath his hands.

“I can’t show up to the celebrations looking like some promiscuous student,” Jaskier says, “looking like some incredibly sexy and awful witcher has just spent a considerable amount of time with his hands in my underclothes.”

“Hm.” Geralt tilts his head to one side. “I wouldn’t call it _considerable_. Quick, perhaps. Fleeting, you might say.”

Jaskier looks like he would very much like to hit him. 

As much as Geralt would like to see Jaskier turn up to the bonfire with come drying on his skin, staining his pale blue trousers, he’s certain Jaskier wouldn’t appreciate the gesture quite so much. He has created a reputation for himself, after all, presumably one of quiet prestige and expertise, the kind of teacher who his students love and respect. It wouldn’t do Geralt well to ignore him and sully it.

Geralt can be creative. Jaskier taught him that much. 

“How about this?”

He watches Jaskier’s face as he moves. His features shift slowly, from confusion at first, to understanding, to anticipation—eyes closed, one clenched fist raised against his mouth.

Geralt kneels before him. 

Jaskier’s dick is flushed red, leaking at the tip. Geralt knows how his skin will taste—salty, sweet, musky in a way that Geralt has never tasted before or since—and his mouth begins to water at the very thought of it. He can’t resist passing his tongue over the clear bead of precome, and Jaskier swears, teeth making indents in the white-knuckled ball of his fist. 

When Geralt takes Jaskier in his mouth, slowly at first, letting his lips stretch around Jaskier’s dick, Jaskier’s hips buck so wildly that Geralt half-expects to taste the salt of his release over his lips. 

“Be calm,” Geralt mutters, his lower lip catching at the head of Jaskier’s cock.

  
art by [Mao](https://twitter.com/chococo_mao)

Jaskier looks down at him in disbelief. He’s blushing right to the tips of his ears, a pretty pink travelling down his neck and chest. Geralt suspects that he won’t last very long at all. The thought makes his own cock twitch, neglected in his tight leather britches, and he palms himself roughly through the fabric.

Geralt sucks Jaskier’s dick into his mouth, working his lips around the head and then taking the rest of the shaft. Jaskier groans, body-deep, as the tip touches the back of Geralt’s throat, once, and then again, taking him so slowly that it verges on punishing. Jaskier’s hands are restless over Geralt’s hair, and part of him—a nasty, debauched part—wants to ask Jaskier to weave his fingers in a little tighter.

He doesn’t have time to make such a request. Jaskier’s hands calm in their flighty movements, his breathing so deep and fast that Geralt can see his chest moving, his eyelashes fluttering as he struggles to maintain his control.

“Geralt, I’m—”

He comes with a shout, a sudden gut punch that doubles him over, no time to raise his hand to his mouth to muffle himself. The flood of sensation hits Geralt in waves, overwhelming his senses, setting every one of his nerve endings alight. The taste of Jaskier spills down his throat, heady on his tongue, warm where it leaks out of the corner of his mouth.

Geralt swallows, and licks Jaskier from base to tip. The motion makes Jaskier’s thighs tremble in Geralt’s palms. And then, moving to the soft skin over his hip bone, Geralt bites a hard, punishing bruise; something to hide, something for Jaskier to remember. His skin blooms, purples and reds, a puckered, glorious design.

“Geralt, Geralt.” 

His name falls from Jaskier’s mouth in a steady stream, needy and sweet. 

Geralt stands and captures Jaskier’s mouth in a kiss—and he can taste both of them, Jaskier’s come and the heat of his mouth, his own crackling desire on the tip of his tongue.

“Well, Geralt.” Jaskier lets his hands roam over Geralt’s body, fleeting at his chest, smooth over the leather bracing at his hips, firm between his legs. “Let me...”

Jaskier’s lips hover tantalisingly over his own. Somewhere in the distance, a garland strung around their perfect, quiet moment, the bell of the clock tower chimes. Once, twice, then on and on until Geralt wonders whether they haven’t been lost in some endless loop, where it’s just the two of them and no one else. Birds take flight into the darkening sky, wheeling and cawing into the night air. 

“They’re signalling the start of the celebrations,” Jaskier says, his words breathless. 

Geralt grazes his teeth along Jaskier’s jaw. Desire smoulders like embers in his stomach, turning over on themselves, sending sparks out into the air.

“And?” Geralt asks.

When he pulls away, there is an expression on Jaskier’s face so devilish that it burns him straight to his very core. It doesn’t take very long to work out exactly what his bard is proposing. The thought makes Geralt’s chest and stomach tighten—frustration, excitement, desperation.

“We should go,” Jaskier says, and that mischievous grin lights up in the blue of his eyes. “They will be waiting for me.”

Geralt hears the sound that rolls in the back of his throat—low and animal, little more than a growl—before he even realises that it has come from him. Part of him would very much like to grab Jaskier by his narrow wrist, his slender waist, and have his way with him until he too came with a shout, all over the back of Jaskier’s shiny blue doublet, damn courtesy, damn reputation. 

But another part of him—the part that is watching Jaskier neatly lace up the front of his trousers again, tucking his undershirt back into his waistband—holds onto that hot coil of desire, biting it down between his teeth. He will accompany Jaskier to his bonfire, knowing that he has taken him with such eager hunger, knowing that that need still burns deep inside him like the rumble of a lightning storm. 

“Okay. Let’s go, witcher.” 

Jaskier looks like a picture of composure. He has smoothed out his hair, straightened his clothes. There is not an outward mark on him to evidence what has passed between them in this shadowed cloister. But Geralt can smell it on him, the afterglow of his lust, and he knows that hidden bruise over Jaskier’s hip bone. He will press his thumb to it, and Jaskier will know too.

“Jaskier.” At the sound of his name, Jaskier takes Geralt’s arm, and the smile he gives is so tender and sweet that Geralt wonders exactly what he has done to deserve him.

“Best behaviour, Geralt.”

“Of course.” Geralt pinches Jaskier’s waist, just hard enough. 

By the time they reach the bonfire, Geralt’s desire has stilled somewhat, settled down to a background roll in his mind and in his gut. Every touch from Jaskier is bright, sending a shiver of sparks along his skin. 

They drink flagons of mead and sit together on low stools around the blazing fire. Jaskier introduces Geralt with such incredible enthusiasm, he wants him to meet everyone and speak with all his students, with all the other professors. They sing songs to honour Helios, and at one point, Jaskier finds a lute—because of course he does. He welcomes in the summer with his nightingale’s voice, enchanting and sharp in the midnight lustre. 

In the small hours of the morning, when the sunrise is just beginning to seep over the horizon, they gather Roach and head to Jaskier’s house by the sea. Geralt has not seen the sea in a long time, too concerned with the inward, monstrous workings of the land. It glows a flat, incredible purple in the morning light.

Before a wide bedroom window, Geralt takes Jaskier with a slow, focused intent, working him open and pressing inside until stars seem to bloom in the dawn sky. He spreads his desire out through him, through his hands; he bites kisses onto the back of his neck.

When they finally lay down to sleep together, limbs tangled and bodies spent, Geralt runs his hands through Jaskier’s hair. He marvels at the silver and brown against his fingers, moonlight and starlight on a forest path. And as he drifts into dreams, he can’t help but wonder whether his Path might have a home at the end of it after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Come and find me on [twitter!](https://twitter.com/andpersephone)


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